Part Five: Romanticism in England
the Age of Poetry
Teaching Arrangement:
I. Historical Background
II. Romanticism
III. A. poets
1. Escapist romanticists / Lake Poets(
婀栫晹娲捐瘲浜?/p>
) (William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, Robert Southey)
2.
active
romanticists
/demonic
group/Satanic
school
(
鎾掓棪娲?/p>
)
(George
Gordon
Byron,
Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats)
B. essayists
(Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt, Thomas De Quincey)
C. novelist
(Walter Scott)
I. Historical Background
(1)
Industrial
Revolution
鈥?/p>
transformed
Britain
from
agricultural
to
industrial
country,
responsible for the change in the pattern of social life and the worsening of social contradictions;?
(2) American revolution in 1775
鈥?/p>
the Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson
in 1776, with its emphasis on individual rights;
(3)
The
French
revolution
in
1789
鈥?/p>
introduced
the
democratic
ideals:
liberty,
equality
and
fraternity for everybody;
(4)the abolition of slavery in the British colonies;
(5) the introduction of system of national education;
(6)the Factory Acts
銆婂伐鍘傛硶妗堛�?/p>
by which the employment of children under nine was forbidden
by the law.
(7) Lyrical Ballads,
銆婃姃鎯呮瓕璋ｉ泦銆?/p>
a collection of poem by William Wordsworth and Samuel
Taylor Coleridge, published in 1798, which marked the start of Romanticism as a literary trend.
II. English Romanticism
1. definition
鈥?/p>
English Romanticism is generally said to have began in 1798 with the publication
of Wordsworth & Coleridge
鈥?/p>
s Lyrical Ballads and to have ended in 1832 with Sir Walter Scott
鈥?/p>
s
death and the passage of the first Reform Bill
銆婃敼闈╂硶妗堛�?/p>
in the Parliament.
English Romanticism is a revolt of the English imagination against the neoclassical reason. The
French
Revolution
of
1789-1794
and
the English
Industrial
Revolution
exert
great influence
on
English Romanticism.
Romanticists show in
their
works their profound dissatisfaction with the social reality and their
deep hatred for any political tyranny, economic exploitation and any form of oppression, feudal or
bourgeois.
In
the
realm
of
literature,
they
revolt
against
reason,
rules,
regulation,
objectivity,
common senses, etc. and emphasize the value of feelings, intuition, freedom, nature, subjectivism,
individuality, originality, imagination, etc.
2. The features of the Romantic writings:
1)? Dissatisfaction with the bourgeois society.
2) Their writings filled with strong-willed heroes or even titanic images, formidable events and
tragic situations, powerful conflicting passions and exotic pictures.
3) pay attention to spiritual and emotional life of man. Most works are supernatural
and full of